DEN06LA024 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From 00V · Peyton, CO to 00V · Peyton, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06LA024
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N9318W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 00V · Peyton, COTo 00V · Peyton, CO
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the pilot leaned the mixture to 50 degrees rich of peak, positioned the propeller lever full forward, and set the throttle to 1,200 RPM on the engine tachometer. After turning base, the pilot reduced the throttle in preparation of extending the flaps. The pilot then increased the throttle to maintain altitude; however, the engine power did not increase as the throttle was applied. The pilot rechecked the fuel pump, which was on, and applied carburetor heat, "which produced a constant and noticable further loss of power." The pilot checked the cockpit gauges and noticed all were in the green and verified the propeller was in the full forward position. The manifold pressure was approximately 12 inches and the engine tachometer was indicating 2,000 RPM. The pilot then immediately turned the airplane toward the runway; however, he could not make it to the runway. Subsequently, the pilot attempted a forced landing onto a nearby road. During the forced landing, the airplane landed in a ditch approximately 20 feet from the road. The airplane's right wing struck a fence post, and the airplane came to rest upright. At a salvage facility, the engine was examined and test run. The engine was test run twice at various power settings. No anomalies were noted during the examination and test runs. A review of a carburetor icing probability chart placed the reported temperature and dew point in the "icing at glide and cruise power" area of the chart.
Probable cause
the pilot's delay in applying carburetor heat that resulted in the partial loss of engine power due to carburetor ice. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06LA024
- Event ID
- 20051222X02001
- Case number
- DEN06LA024
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 637ba85541fe3f9f3b6087826fef9ccc82c70f3f401df04ae805f55e671ee30f; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:11:34.545Z.